Who are temple carpenters and what do they do? If you have travelled to Japan, you must have visited a traditonal temple or two that was built several hundred years ago. And if you ventured into ancient capitals such as Nara or Kyoto, chances are that you’ve shared ground with a wooden structure that have stood over a millenium. The book Ki no ichi Ki no kokoro ( 木の...
2022 has passed and it’s time to do some cleaning up and recap. Since I’ve implemented my book tracker system, I’ve been taking a more structural approach to manage my learnings (notes, to-do-next, rating, time spent on each book, time-to-revisit, etc). Here’s a quick glance at what I enjoyed most last year. Time is medicine Time is medicine is written by Hiruma Eiko, a Guiness-certified oldest pharmacist to prescribe advice...
Why am I here? What should I do now? These questions come to our minds from time to time, regardless of what stage of life we are in. We play many roles every day. We may be students, looking forward to improving our studies and securing a good job after graduation. We may be children, trying to live in harmony with our parents. We may also be team members, working jointly to finish a project on time to satisfy our boss or client....
“The Drowned and the Saved” is the last book from Holocaust survior and writer Primo Levi, published shortly before his suicide in 1987. In this book, he attempted to address the questions “why atrocities happened” and “how to prevent them from happening again”. In different chapters, he distilled his experiences in the camp to explore the fluidity (he termed it “the grey zone”) in human characters, the fragility of perceived memory as well as the state of mind of those in the camps....
What is Danshari Danshari is a mental model pioneered by Hideko Yamashita via a book series in the 2000s, as a way to organize our lives by making deliberate choices. Per Yamashita, she got the idea from her yoga practice and a pilgrimage stay in Koyasan. I used the term mental model and not housekeeping tactics because I truly believe that this has far more practicality beyond just organizing our...
Are these scenarios common to us or those around us? We want to create an app that millions will download and use everyday. We want to write a blog post that will be cross-linked from all popular sites and social media accounts. We spend so much time over-planning that we postpone starting the actual work. Once we actually sit down and work, we are shocked by the stark reality and keep stumbling upon blocks after blocks....